Getting into the Gush

Life gushes. The sea's waves gush shoreward. The droplet of rain joins with others and gushes to the sea. (or directly into the earth) New life gushes out everywhere, in predictable cycles and in spontaneous events. Energy bundles and builds and spews itself out in demonstrations sometimes welcome, but often feared. But life does gush, without seeming limit.

I'm afraid that I have often put myself outside of the gush of life. I have not expected it, I have sat in a stupor, undeserving of its benefit, or I have feared it for I knew I could not control it. In effect, I have kept in place the resistance that keeps it from spilling over me.

But life still wants to gush. I look at others who have accepted the limitlessness of life, and I reason that they are lucky, or that they don't have the hindrances that I do, and my glance into their experience carries a hint of jealousy. I see all that is beautiful and bountiful, but it has only momentary benefit for me, for I soon sink back into the quagmire of my muddles and my troubles.

By my way of thinking about it, I have taken myself out of the flow of life, and have often actively resisted it when I could not get out of it's way.

No more. Today I surrender. Today I flip all the switches that serve to hold back the energy of heaven, the gushing life of great good that flows to and over me if only I allow it. Today I'm risking all and getting into the gush.

Love You Are...

Love you are...and to love you shall return. Just imagine those words, and how great and all encompassing and uniting they are. Maybe we have gotten it all wrong focusing on dust. Maybe we've been looking at it in a backward way.

For me, being has become so much more than what my religious schooling taught me. Oh, I was given a framework to contain my trials and my struggles, somewhat of a place for properly scaled down hopes and dreams. I was pointed to my physical body, composed of elements from the periodic table, told how exquisite yet finite it was, and left with that very ship to sail the sea of life.

Oh, yes...I was also given the hope that when my body finally deteriorated, I might have put an escape clause into effect, and an other worldly force might pull me up to heaven, where I really could live happily ever after, that is my soul, or some other non-physical component of me. The message that I got most strongly, however, was the one that was reinforced each Ash Wednesday...that my essence to begin with was ashes, or dust, and after a life in which I got to make a few moves, I returned to dust.

Rebel that I am...I have come to know otherwise. I did not begin my existence when I was born, nor will it I end it when someone intones 'ashes to ashes...and dust to dust.' I am so many billions of times more than that. I am as big as it gets, unbounded by time and space as we experience it on this planet. The me that I experience in this body is only a tiny bit of the me that is unlimited, the me that is Love. And that me, the Grand I Am is right up there with the God that is, one with Him/Her and all the others that Are, including you. You might call that unthinkably large idea Love.

Love I am...and to Love I shall return.

Everyday Evidences of Synchronicity

(Reposted from Soul Hang Out)

Synchronicity has been on my brain lately. I had some idea of it, but I wasn't sure exactly what it meant, so I went to Merriam to check it out. (I like to think of her as my own personal librarian) Well, on this question, she was not clear. I couldn't put it all together.

My favorite psychology pioneer, Dr. C. G. Jung wrote a book titled Synchronicity, and he tells this story about it. "A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream, I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from the outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer , which, contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt the urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment. I must admit that nothing like it ever happened to me before or since."

My connection with the synchronistic has been nowhere near as dramatic as that account, but it is evidencing itself nonetheless...in everyday ways. I've settled for a very simple definition of the word: 'a relationship between ideas or events that is not logical.'

That relationship has shown up in my life recently around the topic of healing. The impressive thing is how many times, and from how many disparate places it has shown up...in the chaplain training course I signed up for...in the book a friend sent me out of nowhere...in an off-the-cuff comment about stream of consciousness writing in a letter from someone I knew only slightly...in the writing project I was invited to participate in...and more...and more. Healing. Healing. Healing!

Alright, I get the hint. Healing is on the table. And it got there through a series of commonplace pointers that were not logical. So my journey has taken a bit of a turn, and I am excited about it! As well, I am especially delighted with my new traveling companions.

I have not yet experienced anything quite like Jung's dramatic event. But I am finding everyday evidences of synchronicity.